Domestic Abuse: Joint Tenancies

The Renters’ Rights Bill will allow individuals to end joint tenancies, supporting domestic abuse victims to leave their abuser if they share a home. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has announced a £30 million increase to the domestic abuse safe accommodation grant, raising the total funding in 2025-26 to £160 million.

My constituent Molly is trapped in the house where she was violently attacked in front of her children. She is confined to living upstairs, because going into the room downstairs triggers her post-traumatic stress disorder. Despite the perpetrator of this abuse rightfully being in prison and having a restraining order of five years, Molly’s landlord has told her that they cannot take him off the lease, so she cannot move. Can the Minister confirm that the Government are taking steps to ensure that victims of domestic abuse, like Molly, can move on with their lives?

I thank my hon. Friend for raising Molly’s case—our hearts go out to her and her children for the trauma they are living with. Her case raises many issues, including the need for early intervention in domestic abuse cases, the need to improve therapeutic support for victims and, as my hon. Friend has said, the desperate need for reform of the rules around property rights in cases of economic and domestic abuse, so that women are not trapped. I cannot give my hon. Friend immediate answers on all those issues today, but I can promise that they will all be included in our upcoming strategy on violence against women and girls.

While I have every sympathy with Molly and the millions of women who experience domestic abuse, according to the ManKind Initiative, one in five men are also victims of domestic abuse. My constituents Mark and Adam are victims of serial female abusers who engage in not only psychological, physical and financial abuse, but sexual abuse as well. What is being done to make sure there is space for men in refuges, and that there is training for police to ensure they believe these men? Often, they are burly chaps who have been in the Army, and people simply do not believe that they have been victims, which only compounds the problems they face.

We often refer to violence against women and girls, as the term refers to a group of crimes that are majoritively suffered by women at the hands of men, but of course men are also victims—both from other men and from women. The £30 million of extra funding that I mentioned in answer to the substantive question is for councils to provide accommodation in cases of domestic abuse under part 4 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. Local areas should be looking at the needs in their area and acting accordingly.